Exactly 1. That was years ago in Florida. I was doing about 110MPH. Why not, I was used to the twisty heavily trafficked roads here in the northeast so when I hit a stretch of open highway with 70 miles between exits I figured what the hell.

2. Boxers, briefs or commando?

Commando.

3. Have you ever had sex in your office or your place of employment?

I decline to say on the grounds that it may incriminate me. Oh stop, lets just say there’s one computer room that saw me and Keyron gettin’ it on. I wonder if the floor still has that big cum stain. Hmmm.

4. Do you or your so own a motorcycle? Do you ever ride one? Do you wear a helmet when you ride?

Don’t own one, I’m forbidden to have one since Keyron is terrified that I’ll kill myself on a motorcycle. You see, I am a teensy bit of a speed demon. Nothing seriously dangerous, just say 80MPH. In a car it’s one thing but on a two wheeled vehicle. Hell in a car if you smack head on to something you’re dead too. It’s just that with a motorcycle the probability of death rises exponentially.

I’ve ridden them when I was younger. Yes wore a helmet too, sometimes.

5. Ever been skinny dipping?

Of course. Growing up we had a pool and I had willing friends.

Bonus: Ever been arrested? Turned someone in/had someone arrested?

No, and no. Sure I’ve called the cops on DV complaints when my neighbor was beating the shit out of his girlfriend. But other than that, no.

However I do know that my neighbors will drop a dime when anything seems even slightly out of order.

Still having a vexing problem with a Western Electric 2565HKM. It won’t assert A-lead control on a line which causes all sorts of problems with my Western Electric 551C KSU and my Western Electric 2851 wall phone.

For reference:

This is a WE 2565HKM:

Western Electric 2565 HKM

You probably recognize it, it’s one of those old electromechanical phones that used to be everywhere until the Horizon, Merlin, and Partner systems overtook the market. Now there’s a huge hodge podge of key system and PBX vendors out there but the one I’ve seen most everywhere is the spin off from Bell, Avaya. But most of the Avaya gear I see is hung off a Definity/Prologix PBX these days.

And this is a WE 2851. Sorry about that but you can’t embed a Flickr video on WordPress. If anyone from WordPress is listening, please update so I can paste in Flickr videos.

Yes it’s the wall version. These were capable of up to 4 incoming/outgoing phone lines when you hooked them up to one of these:

Qty. 2 Western Electric 551C KSU's

I’ve got everything all connected but as I said above, the 2565KHM is driving me crazy. The way these KSU’s work is that when one set goes off hook on a line it asserts control on a line called the A/A1 pair by shorting the pairs together. Pressing the hold button temporarily disables this signal and puts the line in a hold condition while pushing up the line key.

But on this one it doesn’t work that way. I’ve traced all the wiring, disassembled the entire key assembly. I’ve done it so many times now that I could do it with my eyes closed.

But it still won’t work. The signal lamp works. When the phone rings it flashes. If I pickup the call on the 2851 and put it on hold the line button on the 2565 also displays wink signal.

The other weird thing is that if I jumper A/A1 on the 2565 it’ll trip the line. It’s almost as though something on the key switch for line one itself is broken. That is what I’ll have to test next. I really want to get this system completely up and running so I can use a little FitPC (It’s a little bigger than a deck of playing cards) to run my business line through MagicJack. Then I can plug it into the 551C and have the home line and the business line on the one system.

In those 40 years we’ve made progress. People at bars no longer get harassed by police, in many places in the northeast we have full or almost full protection under the law. Wait Wait, three’s an update. See here. Of course it would have to be in shithole Texas. I’ve been to Texas, if it were to sink to the bottom of the ocean tomorrow I wouldn’t miss it though I would miss a few people I know who live there.

But in 37 states we still have mean spirited DOMA laws in place, which forbids gay people from the right of civil marriage.

And here in RI, House Speaker William Murphy saw fit not to let a divorce equality bill come to a vote. I cannot believe he’s being this obstinate. He knows what the consequences of not changing the divorce law will bring. But I understand his thinking since he’s a good Catholic boy, kisses the Bishops ring et al. You see he’s thinking of the divorce equality bill as the camels nose in the tent flap for gay marriage. But what he has lost sight of is what will happen now that this bill is pretty much dead for this year.

I believe Cass Ormiston will push forward with a discrimination suit against the state. The crux of the argument will be that her Article 1 Section 2 rights under the RI Constitution (To name just one!) are being violated by her inability to obtain a divorce decree in the case of Ormiston v. Chambers.

If it does go forward the section of statute that precludes the equal rights under the law is the Family Court Act of 1967, particularly the section of Rhode Island General Law that has the husband/wife thing in § 8-10-3. It will be the linchpin of the entire suit.

If by chance the suit is successful it would destroy the Family Court Act. I don’t think Murphy is paying attention to that aspect.

And yes, we may have what is perceived to be a hostile judiciary. But when it comes to interpretation of rights under the Constitution I think this might be a slam dunk for the plaintiff.

But otherwise almost every Fortune 500 company has policy that covers LGBT people. And I know having worked for both Brown University and the State of Rhode Island that health care and insurance benefits are available to the partners of gay people.

But it isn’t enough. Until we all have the same rights the fight is never over.

Yesterday was an interesting day. We lost icons that originated in the 1970’s and 1980’s.

I’m talking about the death of Farrah Fawcett at age 62 from cancer, and the death of Michael Jackson from heart failure though more information is coming out at this point.

Interestingly it is 4 years and six months to the day that my paternal grandmother died. I hadn’t thought of that one initially but then the 25 in the date grabbed me, for grandma died December 25, 2005.

And of course my WordPress theme won’t let the whole image show. Just click it go to the full view.

Doonesbury hits it one the head. I’m sorry but I disagree with President Obama’s stance on this. We need to see justice done to Bush and his cronies. What they authorized is criminal, it’s torture and against every convention of the United States. They really need to prosecute Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, hell the hole White House Iraq Group. I say this because I’m certain they all knew about the torture that was taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Even to this day photos have emerged that the Obama administration is suppressing because they’re so inflammatory. So tell me why those criminals in the Bush administration including Bush himself are still waking free?

I know you have a lot on your plate at the moment, what with the economy cratering, North Korea threatening a nuclear strike against a U.S. target etc. But you’ve been disappointing me lately.

During your campaign you made promises to end Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, and to push gay rights forward. Thus far all we’ve seen is a Justice Department defense of DADT that was sickening. You also made promises to ‘fix’ the broken health care system we have here in the U.S.

So why now are you backpedaling and not being our champion for a public insurance program that competes with the insurance industry? Could it be you’re already starting to think about your chances for re-election? Put your mind at ease because I’m issuing not just you but the Democratic Party an ultimatum and I hope my blog followers heed my call.

The election of 2008 was the first time in my life that I gave a significant chunk of money to the primary and to the general race for president. If the demands of the people aren’t met, it will be the LAST year. Instead I’ll use the money to start a new political party. How about a party beholden only to the citizens, one where corporations don’t ride roughshod over our rights. Call it the Children of the Tea Party.

The Tea Party I reference has nothing to do with the Tea Party idiocy we’ve seen over the past few months. The main reason our predecessors burned the Gaspee and then the Boston Tea Party was because of a little thing called taxation without representation. We are in precisely that situation right now. The problem with the modern day Tea Party is that it is a thinly veiled ploy by neo-cons. Recall that neo-con Grover Norquist who famously said “I’d like to shrink the federal government down to a size where it can be drowned in a bathtub”.

Instead the Tea Party I propose is one where our tax dollars are used for the greater good of the citizens in the U.S., not for misadventure in Iraq, not for big arms manufacturers, or big contract firms. No, by greater good I mean life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To have those things health is one thing that cannot be ignored, nor can the rights of all of us. I’m talking about the Defense of Marriage Act and the Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell military compromise.

Other things that I consider the greater good, how about stewardship of the environment? How about we start building the infrastructure and cars for the remainder of the 21st century, cars that run on electricity, get anywhere from 200 to 300 miles per charge, and can be recharged withing 30 minutes. I’ve already written about how you could put the charging stations at supermarkets since everyone has to shop at some point. By doing this we reduce our total demand for fossil fuels while at the same time reducing the amount of pollutants we spew into the air. I know the naysayers would harp on the fact that it might overload the electrical grid, and other arguments. So use solar and wind to generate the electricity, here in the northeast we get plenty of both sunshine and wind.

Another public good, making sure that everyone receives a quality education. What is a quality education you ask? It isn’t the No Child Left Behind Act. That was a cruel joke. Instead revise curriculum to first address linguistic barriers, then teach the kids critical thinking skills. That alone would put the U.S back in its rightful place as the beacon for knowledge and peace.

Invest money in public transit. Not token amounts, instead I’m talking massive investment. Take the trillion plus we’re spending on the military every year and end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and use the difference to fund the creation of real public transportation (Hint, not buses!)

Invest some of the money in fixing crumbling infrastructure. I know here in RI you could rebuild I-95 from the Massachusetts border through Providence. That would be a good start. Maybe even drop I-95 underground from the RI line through the state. Wouldn’t that be fantastic. It’s only 35 or so miles.

As far as foreign policy, our foreign policy would be better served if we were in fact energy self sufficient as I’ve outlined above. Now that we own a good chunk of GM lets get them to produce solar panels and wind turbines since we know they don’t know fuck all about building cars.

In short, no more money to the Democratic or Republican parties. We’ve known for years that you’ve been bought and sold many times over. It’s time for your cushy life in congress or the White House to come to an end.

The only reason I’m posting this is because Blais is one of our most vociferous enemies in the Rhode Island Senate. At marriage equality hearings he likes to say that he hears from ALL of his constituents when the reality is that he only hears from perhaps a small number of them.

I made this point in a meeting I attended at MERI. Most of our legislators only hear from us when we’ve got something to gripe about, they never get any encouragement from their constituents. I’ve made the point that we should all be contacting those legislators that support marriage equality and thanking them for that support and asking them to help us move it forward.

PROVIDENCE — The state Board of Pharmacy has taken disciplinary action against Sen. Leo R. Blais, R-Coventry, for a spate of violations uncovered in a routine inspection of his pharmacy, Pawtuxet Valley Prescription Center, in October 2007, including poor record keeping, a failure to segregate “outdated, unusable and mislabeled” medications to make sure none were dispensed and “misbranded drugs.”

The board voted unanimously on Thursday to publicly reprimand him and place him on probation for two years, during which time he will be monitored and be required to submit quarterly reports “evidencing compliance.”

And this isn’t Blais’ first time in the rodeo:

In 1999, the board suspended his licenses as a pharmacist, a pharmacy registrant (the person responsible for a pharmacy), and as a pharmaceutical wholesaler for six months but stayed the suspensions, instead placing Blais on probation for one year. The violations then included errors in dispensing drugs, dispensing drugs without a valid prescription and poor record keeping.

So in ten years Sen. Blais has been looked at by the Board of Pharmacy twice. During that time he’s also filed a Chapter 11 re-organization on his pharmacy.

Perhaps Senator Blais should resign from the Senate and focus on his business.

I’ve been watching President Obama do the old double speak routine for the past few weeks when it comes to rights for LGBTQI people. We still have no real action on Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, and then DOJ’s (From what I hear, it’s a Mormon holdover from the Bush admin that wrote the brief) disgusting attempt to equate being gay with incest and pedophilia, all while defending the Defense of Marriage Act.

Then I hear that the big wigs in gay circles, you know em’ as HRC and the like, they’re saying we’d rather see hate crimes legislation, because it is easier.

I recall President Kennedy’s word on why we were going to the moon, “…Not because it easy, but because it is hard.” and think to myself that trying to get our rights in a piece meal fashion is detrimental in the long run.

There is a lot of anger in the gay community over this, I’m on of those who is very angry at the likes of our supposed allies and at our President.

So angry in fact that here is my open message to both President Obama and to the Democratic National Committee: You will not get a red hot dime from me until the day I have all the rights that a straight person has. That includes:

Watch this video and tell me that the U.S. insurance industry isn’t just using FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) to try to derail a universal health plan here.

Some parts from the video I think you’ll enjoy.

First you’ll see President Obama, who I’m not too pleased with at the moment, waffling away from answering a question on single payer aka universal health care.

Then we have psychiatrist David Gratzer being questioned by Congressman Dennis Kucinich. That part is absolutely priceless and we watch Gratzer try to be flippant and Kucinich pressing on with the questions.

Contrary to what you’ve seen on TV ads, wait times in Canada are NOT months for an MRI. When I had my MRI here in the U.S. it took over a month to get the appointment, then another month for the results. Had it been a cancerous tumor it would have probably grown to the point where treatment would be more difficult.

Took close to 3 months to get in to see my M.D. That’s with decent insurance.

They’re essentially saying there isn’t majority support for marriage equality in the state of Rhode Island.

Earlier they’d let slip demographic data for poll, and I noted 36% of their respondents were age 65 or older.

Interestingly I ran the query of all registered voters in RI and come up with only 19% that are 65 or older. If I do 50 or older I end up with 45%.

So Quest, Profughi and NOM are telling a major fib here. 36% compared to 19% is beyond the margin of error.

This isn’t the first time that NOM has been caught telling a lie and it certainly won’t be the last.

BTW, I emailed my findings to both the marriage equality folks and to Maggie Gallagher. I’ll be most interested when I get a response from Gallagher. So far she’s always been one to flip it and send it back my way.

Here’s the stats I pulled from the RI Central Voter Registration System:

691,778 Total Registered Voters
314,269 Age 50 or older

45% of registered voters that are 50 or older.
19% of registered voters that are 65 or older

This leaves me to wonder exactly where the firm of Victor Profughi is getting their data? They can always get a copy of the voter database. My guess is they just polled the NOM mailing list.